Frienship Hotel Hanoi
34 Nam Ngu St. Hanoi, Vietnam
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Bia Hoi in Ha Noi
After our return from Halong Bay and the fiasco that is tourism in Vietnam, we were glad to be back in Hanoi, doing things on our own terms.
We had a quick freshen up and then after some tea went with Andrew and our other new friends from the boat epic to see the Water Puppet show at the theatre. It is a centuries old tradition that used to be acted out in the water of the rice paddies. The music was fantastic and the ...
Organised chaos
... cars in front of us and we narrowly avoid joining the pile up. Thankfully it looks like nobody is injured but the road (like a 1 lane motorway) is blocked. Not a problem in Vietnam... We reverse up the road to a junction where we drive down the wrong side instead to pass the accident and then rejoin the correct side at the next junction! After a few hours we arrive safely at Halong Bay and board our junk for lunch. Halong translates as 'Bay of Descending Dragon' and is ...
Saying hey to Ho!
... Pho which is a tasty and very cheap noodle soup. The challenge though is to make sure that you avoid any street stalls that sell dog. It is quite common to eat dog in Hanoi and there is a street a few kilometres outside the centre of the city which has a whole row of speciality dog restaurants. We're pretty sure we saw a cooked dog at one of the street stalls too, it may have been something else but it looked like the back end of half a dog to me and apparently you can tell by the ...
Chickens, toothpaste, temples, and prisons.
... appear too much like a tourist. That worked for me for about thirty seconds. At which point I realized that A) I was definitely going to get lost using this technique, and B) I was the only white person walking the streets at 7am. Pretty sure they pegged me for a tourist the minute I stepped onto the street. So out came the map. I consulted it literally every ten feet or so and didn't get lost once. A true feat when street names change every few ...
Hanoi Old Quarter
... on each floor. Some lower, ancient Vietnamese-style buildings remain here and there. The blocks are fairly big and I suspect that between the streets there are courtyards and gardens, more living quarters, craft and food preparation areas, warehouses and who knows what else. There are narrow, dark hallways between the buildings leading into these mid-block areas, but I haven't found any good windows for peering into one of them.
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